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Police: Modern tools help in 1971 unsolved killing

WILSON RING, Associated Press
Published 7:03 p.m. ET July 28, 2016

Rita Curran, 24, was killed in Burlington in 1971.(Photo: COURTESY VERMONT STATE POLICE)

An investigation into the 1971 killing of Burlington second-grade teacher Rita Curran is getting a boost from modern techniques, and police say they are making progress in efforts to find out who killed her.

The 24-year-old Curran was sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled in her Burlington apartment near the University of Vermont campus. The slaying has bedeviled investigators since, including U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, who was called to the crime scene when he was the county prosecutor.

Leahy said it's the only unsolved homicide he can recall from his eight years as Chittenden County state's attorney, a post he held from 1966 until he was elected to the Senate in 1974.

"It was a horrible scene. I can still picture what I saw," said Leahy, who has been updated on the progress of the investigation by Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo.

"A lot of evidence was gathered there. We didn't have techniques like DNA and things like that back at that time," Leahy said. "Hopefully, the evidence that was gathered might help."

Burlington Deputy Police Chief Shawn Burke said much of the evidence collected in the case has been re-examined with modern techniques during the past several years, and "uniquely, there are still witnesses and people of interest" who remain alive.

"It is a case where we have been running down some active leads," said Burke, who would not elaborate.

July 19 was the 45th anniversary of Curran's death; her brother and sister published a memorial notice in the Burlington Free Press, calling for answers to the decades-long quest to find out what happened to her.

"We will never forget you," the notice read. "We will never give up hope that we will someday know why you were taken from us."

Curran's relatives could not be reached for comment.

News reports from 1971 say Curran was killed around midnight. A roommate found her body when she and another roommate returned after being out for a couple of hours.

For a time, investigators thought Curran could have been a victim of the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, who was born in Burlington and was known to be in the area the summer Curran was killed. But Vermont investigators spoke with him before his 1989 execution in Florida and discarded him as a suspect, Leahy said.

"I can only imagine how relieved her family would be if it's solved," Leahy said.